Today's hearing devices are adjusted to the individual needs of hearing device users. The most important adjustment when used in the medical area lies therein that the hearing device can compensate or correct a hearing impairment of a patient. Therefore, an audiogram, for example, is established of the patient based on which audiogram different adjustments are made in the hearing device. Furthermore, today's hearing devices offer the possibility to select one of several hearing programs available in the hearing device in an automatic or manual manner. Thereby, the possibility is created for the hearing device user to adjust his hearing device to different acoustic situations in a best possible way.
The many and diverse adjustment possibilities, being either manually or automatically, give often raise, on the other hand, to confusions of the hearing device user, because it is difficult for the inexperienced hearing device user, on the one hand, to select the correct adjustments, on the other hand, an automatic selection of the hearing program can often not be comprehended by the hearing device user.
For this reason, it has already been proposed to record certain data in the hearing device, which data allow to analyze occurred acoustic situations afterwards. In this connections reference is made to U.S. Pat. No. 4,972,487, wherein a hearing device is described that has a memory unit in which the following data can be recorded:
Number of hearing program changes;
How many times a particular hearing program has been used, the selected hearing program being used for a minimal amount of time; and
How long each of the possible hearing programs has been active.
Furthermore, reference is made to U.S. Pat. No. 5,210,803. In this printing a hearing device is also described with a memory unit. Though, and in contrast to the first mentioned printing, the memory unit is being used to save certain characteristics of the hearing device based on which the hearing device can be identified unambiguously. It is pointed out that certain information is already saved during the manufacturing of the hearing device, as e.g. the manufacturing company or technical data, as e.g. the adjusted gain.
For the sake of completeness, reference is made to a further known information recording variation, which is described in WO 00/41 440. As for the above-mentioned state of the art, this known teaching is also dealing of a hearing device with a memory unit to record information during operation of the hearing device. The information being recorded is limited to register the time during which the hearing device is being used. Therewith, the possibility is created to charge the actual use of the hearing device to the user. Furthermore, it is proposed that certain characteristics of the hearing device can only be used in a limited manner, once a preset time has been reached. An elimination of such limitations can only be reached by paying a fee.
Furthermore, reference is made to EP-1 206 163 A1, in which the already mentioned state of the art is again described.
It has been shown that all the known methods to record information are not sufficiently flexible to explain the actual reason for an erroneous adjustment or for an automatic adjustment being unexpected for the hearing device user in order that this adjustment can be corrected in the following. Fact is that there exists an extremely large diversity of possible causes for an erroneous behavior of a hearing device. This cannot be satisfactorily handled by the known methods. As a result thereof, the adaptation process according to the known information recording methods is extremely lavish and time-consuming.
It is therefore the object of the present invention to provide a method for recording information in a hearing device and/or in a recording unit operationally connected at least partially to the hearing device, which method allows complete investigation of possible erroneous adjustments or of adjustments being unexpected for the hearing device user in certain situations. It is a further object of the present invention to obtain maximum support for these adjustments of a hearing device in order to simplify the adjustment or fitting process.